December 04, 2012

Congratulations to Daley Elementary Academy for achieving the Silver award in the HealthierUS School Challenge! Daley joins public schools across Chicago in meeting the challenge through Go for the Gold, a partnership of Chicago Public Schools and Healthy Schools Campaign that supports schools in meeting high standards for healthy food, physical activity and nutrition education. Daley met the challenge with the support of Healthy Places, an initiative of Healthy Chicago. This post is part of a series celebrating Go for the Gold schools.

A group of dedicated parents inspired Daley Elementary Academy to achieve HealthierUS School Challenge (HUSSC) certification, says physical education instructor Francisco Hernandez. “We have a really active group of parents who are champions for the health programs at our school,” Hernandez said. “They worked with Healthy Schools Campaign and Healthy Places to complete the HUSSC so that they could show how important they think it is for our school family to be healthy.”

Community partners such as Urban Initiatives also provided key support, organizing wellness teams and helping to find more grants and partners.

Hernandez said, “When we painted a mural in the cafeteria featuring the MyPlate graphic and some OrganWise Guys characters, I was surprised by how excited students were to do this painting. They had so much fun with the project that we had to keep it going for several weeks so that they could keep painting.”

April Lillstrom helped coordinate Healthy Places efforts through Urban Initiatives and worked closely with Mr. Hernandez and the students. Lillstrom said that the HUSSC provided needed focus and drive toward school wellness. “The HUSSC has helped us, as a school, recognize that health and wellness projects are valuable and worth the effort of organizing,” she explained. “Now that we have some experience with this and have an active Wellness Committee, we are more capable of doing more health and wellness projects in the future.”

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Thanks to Daley Elementary Academy for sharing thoughts about their achievement with us!

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Daley Elementary Academy’s achievement in Go for the Gold was supported by Healthy Places, an initiative of Healthy Chicago. Healthy Places is a collaborative effort between the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative, Cooperative Agreement Number 1U58DP002376‐01. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors/organizers and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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